A Brooklyn con artist convicted of stealing $210,000 earned himself two extra years in the slammer yesterday after he tried to avoid jail by faking his own death.

Kevin Walker, 42, was looking at a maximum of six years in federal prison for ripping off six area banks – but wound up with eight years after a judge ripped his brazen attempt to deceive the court by hiding behind the identity of a terminal cancer patient.

“You just can’t seem to help yourself,” said Brooklyn federal court Judge John Gleeson before handing down the stiff sentence. “Society needs to be protected from you.”

Walker was free on $75,000 bail and awaiting sentencing on the bank fraud late last year, when he told his lawyer he had terminal stomach cancer and would be living out his final days at Brooklyn’s Calvary Hospice.

He continued to call in each day to probation officials – as required by terms of his bail – telling them he could be reached in room 3114 of the facility for terminal patients.

In early December, the lawyer called the hospice and was told that Kevin Walker had died. He relayed the bad news to probation officials, who in turn notified the court and instructed officials there to call off sentencing and close out the case.

But the assistant U.S. attorney prosecuting the case, Walter Norkin, wasn’t convinced – as Walker had claimed to suffer from multiple sclerosis, strokes, leukemia and a variety of other ailments throughout the trial.

Norkin arranged for a treasury agent to visit the hospice with a photo of Walker the fraudster and compare it to Walker the deceased.

The two didn’t match.

When officials called Walker on his cellphone – a number they’d had since the case began – he picked up.

What prosecutors later learned is that Walker had called eight different hospices before finding one that had a patient also named Kevin Walker.

Yesterday, Walker, entering court in a wheelchair and wearing a prison jumpsuit, had nothing to say before sentenced.

Prosecutors said he had previously run a catering business called Jamaica Me Crazy and had applied to the Brooklyn DA’s Office for a youth counselor position, claiming – fraudulently – that he had a Ph.D. in psychology and a counseling license.

In addition to the eight-year sentence, Walker will also be subject to five years of post-release supervision.

According to the prosecutor’s pre-sentencing memorandum, Walker later claimed he never intended to fake his own death, but rather to delay sentencing while he looked for a new lawyer.